The Children
by Babbitt
Summary: All the Piper wanted was a friend.
1. Her Two Youngest Sons

The Children

Note: I hate writing stories when you don't have half the details you need. But I'm in dire need of writing practice. This is the result.

I hope this is somewhat consistent with canon.

Chapter 1: Her Two Youngest Sons

It had been all right until Tom turned twelve. Then he was off, heckling Mother about his apprenticeship. Tom had decided, a long time ago, that he was going to work in the Border Sea, and woe be it on Mother to apprentice him elsewhere! He said the Lower House was too stuffy, the Pit too dusty, the Great Maze too dirty, the Middle House too boring, the Upper House all of the above put together and the Incomparable Gardens… Well, Sunday was mucking about around there, and he wasn't about to go work with his stiff of an older brother!

And so, while the Architect dealt with her second son, her third son was left quite alone. He was too young to be apprenticed yet. He was left to wander the house all he liked, playing the pipe that made everyone call him the Piper. Simple melodies, cheery folk songs, several concertos by Mozart— he played them all, he was so bored. He tried not to think back to the days before Tom turned twelve.

Back then, the two of them had loads of fun playing together. Tom was always coming up with the best ideas of what to do in the House: pretending at soldiers in the Great Maze until they got lost, stealing aboard a ship in Port Wednesday (how were they to know that it was owned by a pirate?), hitching rides with the Paper Pushers when they weren't looking. They had flooded the entirety of the Lower House once. All the documents were soaked; the Denizens were thrown into such confusion that the Architect threatened to throw them into the Pit. They tried to content themselves with beating Denizens into elevators after that.

But as Tom neared the age of twelve, he gave more serious thought to what he would do with the rest of his (probably very long) life. It was customary for a son of the Architect, upon turning twelve, to take up an apprenticeship somewhere in the House in order to learn a trade that would be useful in the running of the Universe. Tom would still play with the Piper, in the sense that he allowed his younger brother to tag along with him. But they no longer went to the Great Maze to play at soldiers; they went to inspect exactly what soldiers did. Or they went to the Lower House to watch the Ink Fillers dribble ink into bottles or to the Middle House to watch the Winged Servants of the Night drill. The Piper thought it was all very dull, but Tom watched every ink drop fall into those bottles as if it was the water of life.

The Piper much preferred sailing on the Border Sea to watching ink bottles get filled—this was quite something because the Piper hated sailing. He hated how the salty spray would always get in his eyes or how the rope burned his palms when he hoisted the sails (and sails were always having to be hoisted, it seemed). And somehow, he always felt like throwing up, even when the water was calm. This, Tom said, was quite an achievement; not many people could say they got sea sick in lake water.

Tom did agree with the Piper though—sailing on the Border Sea was much preferable to filling ink bottles. He took to haunting Port Wednesday, following various sailors, merchants or admirals, and pestering them with questions about their adventures or what a particular sailing term meant. This didn't leave him much time to play with the Piper, much to the latter's disappointment. He kept up asking Tom to play with him every time they saw each other.

But even during those rare times when Tom consented, Tom's mind was on the sea. Tom refused to play any other games besides sea-faring games: these usually consisted of the Piper pretending to be a ferocious sea creature or a nasty pirate and Tom pretending to be the self-styled "Mariner" protecting the House, the Universe, and Mummy. It would end, also as usual, with a triumphant Tom sitting on top of a crying Piper. Mother would come, scold Tom, then separate the two so that the Piper would find himself, once again, quite alone.

And now it seemed that he was to be permanently alone. There was no asking Tom to play with him ever again. Tom was on his way to growing up, once Mother admitted to having already apprenticed him to Lady Wednesday and he had run off to Port Wednesday, far too excited and impatient to wait for a Transfer Plate. It seemed to the Piper that that had been the last time he would ever see his older brother.

Mother was not particularly sympathetic to the Piper's predicament, no matter how much he moped about the House, or played long, drawn-out dirges squeakily on his pipe. (She knew, further, that the Piper was purposefully squeaking to remind her just how miserable he felt.) Raising three children had made her realize just how irritating children could be. It did not help matters that the Piper's emotions were irritating too; there was no logic to missing his brother, she thought. The Piper had known Tom would leave when he turned twelve.

"Why don't you start considering where you would like to be apprenticed," said the Architect, trying her hardest to seem patient. The Piper hooted a long note at her with his pipe.

He had already thought about it (there was nothing else to do when you were watching bottles of ink) and found that many of the jobs in the House did not appeal to him at all. Besides, he had only just turned seven and did not feel like thinking about his future. He only thought about how he would've liked a friend to spend the day with, climbing Tuesday's pyramid or (yes, he admitted this) watching the Ink Fillers fill the ink bottles. Anything was good, as long as he had someone else to do it with.

There were no children in the House. There were only fully grown Denizens who had been created for distinct purposes that made them quite useless at making mischief. There were the ones who were timid and became harried at the thought of ruining a task, the steely ones who concentrated so fiercely on their jobs that they never noticed him, and the scary ones who would pay enough attention to the Piper to make him feel like he was a waste of time, and if he ever bothered them again, well, not even Mother could save him. It was no use to try and make a friend out of a Denizen. The current Denizens anyhow.

Which is how the Piper ended up in the Academy of Sorcery with a hole peering into the Void.


	2. Something Out of Nothing

The Children

Disclaimer: I forgot this in the first chapter, but I don't own Keys to the Kingdom. As if you didn't know that already.

Chapter 2: Something Out of Nothing

The Piper was only seven. He was inherently magical, as were all of the Family, but he didn't know any proper sorcery. He didn't know how to conjure things out of Nothing or how to transmute already existing objects into magical devices.

So he wanted to learn how. He took an elevator to the Academy in the Upper House and enquired at the reception desk, "Where can I learn how to conjure Something out of Nothing?"

The Denizen at the desk had to crane his neck to see over the table top and down to the Piper. He recognized him immediately, of course. The pipe, if anything, was clutched securely in the boy's hand.

"My, Piper Sir," said the Denizen, with a slight chuckle. He decided to humor the child, and leave it to those stuck-up Professors to send him away. He drew up the map of the school's departments. "That would be lab 5-17."

"5… 17?" said the Piper who did not know what that meant.

"Yes," said the Denizen. "That means the fifth floor, the room marked 17. Straight up those stairs over there, all five flights of them, and to your left. Or the elevator over there and to your right."

The Piper meekly chose the elevator and for a moment all that was to be heard in lobby was the ding of the elevator as it arrived and the ding of it again as it left. When it was clear that the Piper was no longer there, the Denizen stuffed a fist in his mouth and smothered a laugh.

Meanwhile, the boy had found the lab and had rattled the doorknob to see if it was open. It was not. It was locked from the inside. He wondered if anyone was in. There was a window pane in the top half of the door that was covered by blinds. Lines of light filtered through the slits.

The Piper made to knock, but the door opened before his hand met the wood. Someone came walking out.

"Excuse me!" said the Denizen in the door way as she nearly knocked into the Piper. She spotted the pipe first, then noticed the little boy attached to it. "May I help you?"

The Denizen had only said it only out of politeness. She was a steely type who was much too concentrated on her work to pay much attention to other things. Already, she was forgetting that the Piper was in front of her.

But the Piper answered, "yes" and helped her refocus on the boy. "Yes," said the Piper. "I would like to know how to conjure Something out of Nothing, please. I was told I could learn it here."

And here, clearly, was a breakdown in communications. The receptionist had sent the boy up to the lab to be turned away, while the people within the lab fully expected the receptionist to be the one to turn people away. In other words, the Denizen assumed that since the boy was here, it was okay for him to be here—which was certainly not the case.

"All right, all right," said the Denizen and she ushered the Piper into the room.

There were several other Denizens in the lab, all quite surprised to see their colleague back so soon. She explained the situation to them, her hand on the boy's shoulder so that they could see him clearly (he was easily dwarfed by the lab counters), and since much of the day's work was already done, they began to instruct the boy on the Creation of Something Out of Nothing.

"Well, you take your key…"

"My key?"

"Yes, your key. You have got one, haven't you? A magic amplifying device?"

As far as the Piper knew, he did not have a key. But something compelled him not to share that bit of information with these Denizens. He looked down at his hands, the pipe securely within them as it had always been. Perhaps…

"Yes, a key…" said the Piper.

"Well, you take your key, and rip a tiny (and we mean very tiny) hole in Reality. You rip it right into the Void, and out of the Void, you draw a little gobbet of Nothing—"

"A little gobbet? What if I want to make something big? Wouldn't I need a big gobbet?"

"Oh no, no. Just a little gobbet; that's good enough. You draw out a little gobbet of Nothing and—keeping in mind a strong picture of what you want—you shape the gobbet of Nothing into the image of what you had in mind. Then, presto! You'll have Something out of Nothing."

"Have you got that?" asked the first Denizen. "Would you like to try?"

He had not quite gotten that. The Piper tried to list the steps in his head: Take your key, shape the gobbet into—wait, you have to get the gobbet first and you do that by… by ripping Reality! With your Key and then…

But the first Denizen was already taking him into the middle of the room, gabbling on about how their research was about ripping holes into Reality. How small could a small hole be? That sort of thing, you know.

She left him in the middle of the room and went to join her fellow Denizens. They watched him expectantly.

"Don't be nervous," she said. "Just think of what you want and get it."

A most befuddled Piper stood there, his fingers slipping off the pipe. The whole lesson had flashed past, he had not had time to think up an image in his head. His mind went straight to Tom.

He put the pipe to his lips and began to play. Anything. At first they were just notes, but before long, they were gathering themselves up into Tom's favorite sea shanty. The Piper simply stood there, and let the music rush through his pipe and all over the room. If anything, it helped his nerves, because the playing itself was not accomplishing anything. No magic occurred; no Void. The Denizens looked at each other, slightly confused. Was something wrong?

Then the Piper turned his thoughts towards Nothing. He thought of a lack of everything, a gaping hole, a window into a darkness beyond his capacity to describe color. His pipe stopped turning out the sea shanty; it became a deep, dull sound.

Then there it was. Roughly the size of his fist, it existed near the bell of his pipe, about level to his waist. The Piper had not really expected that to happen; he had thought the image would remain securely within his head. But the hole was really, truly there. He could feel it sucking on the Reality around him, could feel it blocking up his ears, clamming his skin, drawing him in…

He stopped playing. The last note hung in the air like a desperate plea for him to keep playing. As it faded away, its protests fading to nothing, the hole yawned and was suddenly a rip the size of half the room.

The Denizens scrambled towards their various scientific instruments, trying to contain the breach before a Nithling could form. Somehow, someone managed to remember to save the Piper from falling into the Void. The hole was closed up in a matter of minutes and the inhabitants of the room were left to try and get their breath back. After which, they began to congratulate each other on a job well done.

"Your hypothesis worked," said one Denizen to the female Denizen the Piper had met first. In the flush of their success, they clean forgot about the Piper. And by then, he had already escaped the room, hobbled down the five flights of stairs, walked past the (sleeping) receptionist, and come out into the sunlight of the Upper House.


	3. Holes and Magic Lessons

The Children

Chapter 3: Holes and Magic Lessons

Poor Piper! He did not know there were other ways to make friends than to create them out of Nothing. He tried and tried what the Denizens of 5-17 taught him, but nothing came of his efforts, except holes into Nothing which he struggled, and often failed, to close. Nithlings would escape into the House and wreak havoc upon the Denizens, until a Day, with a Noon or a Dusk arrived to send them back into Nothing and close the hole.

News of the incidents quickly made their way to the Architect, who seemed to instinctively know the identity of the culprit. She knew her House to be of perfect make, unlikely to dissolve into Nothing, save in places set aside for that particular reason. She was certain it was none of the Days, for each knew how to properly close a hole into Nothing, and none wished to jeopardize their standing in the house by undermining its foundations and terrifying its inhabitants. This left her young sons, and since Tom was sailing in the Secondary Realms at the time, the Piper was the likeliest suspect. He was just the person with enough magic, lack of education, and abundance of unengaged time to foster such a catastrophe.

The Piper was soon summoned to her office, where the Architect wasted no time to broach the subject.

"Are you opening holes into the Void within my House?"

Understandably, the young boy was terrified of his mother. He hooted at her, dumbly.

The Architect's eyes narrowed at her youngest son. She knew, with little doubt, that it was the Piper who was endangering her House, and his refusal to admit did nothing to help his case.

"If you cannot find a better use of your time," she said, "I will assign you to a Denizen." She watched his eyes enlarge at the thought. "Yes... In fact, I will do it. I will order him up right now." Mother pulled the phone towards her and continued to talk as she dialed and waited for a person to pick up. "I will instruct him to teach you how to use magic properly. It is about time you learn, if you are opening holes into Nothing. Without an understanding of the consequences, no doubt."

He was going to be given magic lessons! Never mind the nuisance of a Denizen bodyguard, he would soon learn what he was doing wro—

"And no, it will not be fun," continued Mother, with hardly a pause. "It will be a punishment, Piper, and you will know it. If I hear that you are opening holes into Nothing once more… No, if I even hear that you are causing trouble of any kind, I will send you to the Pit. Working there for a hundred years would surely cure you of this foolishness." Someone finally answered on the other end of the line. "Yes," she said, her voice booming in the other room. "Send Goodfellow to my office."

They waited. The Architect made to inspect her perpetually perfect nails while counting the seconds to Goodfellow's appearance. The Piper remained in his spot, chewing quietly on his pipe. Who was this Goodfellow he was being strapped to? And how could learning magic be a punishment?

The Denizen was late in coming. He looked to be perfectly normal, neither too tall nor too short, nor particular handsome: a testament, indeed, to his modest rank within the House. Goodfellow tripped on his way through the door, laughing. "Sorry 'bout that," he said. Then he composed himself with a well-placed cough, situated himself beside the Piper, and accepted his new orders.

It became obvious why Mother assigned Goodfellow to his charge (or the Piper to Goodfellow's.) Though being amicable enough to be worthy of his name, Goodfellow was an utter failure as a Denizen, too clumsy and far too attached to the Secondary Realm drink known as tea. They spent the bulk of lessons drinking and spilling various teas from across the Secondary Realms (the Piper could hardly believe the number of different teas available, though it tasted to him as though they had the same kind every day). Only occasionally did Goodfellow remember that they met to discuss magic. He would then attempt to place the tea cup on the table daintily, only to have it slip from his grasp at the last moment and splash tea on the table cloth, his uniform, and, when he wasn't fast enough, the little Piper. Slapping his table napkin at all the wet spots, Goodfellow would finally speak of magic.

There was much to say about the subject. Most of it theory and therefore incredibly dull. It was almost as bad as endlessly drinking tea, except that Goodfellow would become even more animated and get tea everywhere. The Piper invariably emerged from magic lessons soaking wet and knowing no more than when he first arrived.

These lessons continued for a healthy year of House time. Goodfellow dithered on about tea and magic theory while the Piper would occupy himself with anything other than the Denizen's talk. Sometimes he made up songs on his pipe. Goodfellow actually enjoyed these interjecting melodies, pausing in his speech to conduct the Piper with the sugar spoon or to relate how a particular ditty reminded him of the first time he tasted earl grey tea. Every now and then, he dithered straight through it—the Piper wondered if Goodfellow was paying any attention to him during these moments and thought perhaps it was an opportune time to leave. But they never were: as soon as he stepped away from the table or stopped off the music, the Denizen would ask where he was going, and put on an expression characteristic of puppy faces. The Piper could not leave.

Other times, the Piper thought of Tom and wondered if his magic lessons had been just as dreadful as these. He wondered what his brother would say if he ever had the misfortune of meeting Goodfellow, then wondered, further, what Tom was doing at that moment. Was he off on big adventures, busting pirates and wild sea creatures on the Border Sea? Or taking inventory of all the gold and booty acquired by Lady Wednesday's fleet? Surely he was doing something more exciting and lively than having tea parties would Goodfellow everyday.

More than ever, the Piper pined for a friend. Goodfellow, in his dullness and narrow-mindedness, thinking of nothing but tea and magic theory, seemed to epitomize all of what the Piper disliked of his Mother's Denizens. As the Architect of the Universe, couldn't she have done better?

What he would do to run around the House right now, disrupting all the other stuffy Denizens in their likewise stuffy work…Better yet, with a friend that was his very own, someone who wouldn't go away like Tom. Someone who would always be willing to go on adventures with him, not just sit on him or drag him off to see ink bottles. He began to muse and plan on these grand adventures he would have with this friend.

"Well, would you like to give it a try?"

Huh? "Give what a try?" asked the Piper. It was still magic lessons, and he was just calculating the logistics for camping in the Great Maze as Goodfellow had prattled on about… whatever he prattled on about. But the Denizen had stopped, and was now gazing at his student inquiringly.

"Magic, of course," said Goodfellow.

"Really?" said the Piper, hardly able to believe it.

"Yes," said the Denizen, with a laugh. "Did you think we were going to drink tea all the time? Really, Piper Sir, best not get addicted…"

"I-I mean," said the Piper, "we really get to do some magic? We really get to poke a hole into the Void, and create Something out of Nothing?"

Goodfellow laughed. "Really, Piper Sir, you have a most advanced imagination. No, we won't be doing that for years! Small and simple things first, sir, small and simple things…"

Note: TT I despise this chapter. But I've written it several times now and then let it sit for months on end. I'll just go with it. I have no idea when I'll manage to put together a Chapter 4.


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